Unfortunately no more cigars in LH F lounges...

Thats what I thought! LX went from a plain Smoking Room F Lounhttps://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...fb16f922de.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...16d6c4157c.jpg
ge A Gates to a Davidoff Smoking Room!

Amex seems to have some deal for Gold card holders too... last Sunday in the MUC K C/SEN entrance there was some arm waving, screen staring and typing going on for a Amex Gold Card holder from Italy trying to get into the C lounge. An AC*G was ahead of me who couldn't produce his *G card and was taking turns with the Amex Gold guy to arm wave at the lounge warden. After watching the scene for 5 mins I just asked to scan my boarding pass to be let in, so I don't know what the outcome was (for the Amex Guy, the AC*G managed access about 10 min later).

Who's paying for who? Are LH so desperate for those beans? Or is it just a promo to show the hallowed zones of the LH lounges to all those "premium" Amex cardholders.

I am not an expert of the nuances of M&M, but is this really going to move the dial for passengers choosing to attain or renew their HON membership? I tend to think that, for a good portion of top tier flyers, status is a consequence of their normal flying patterns rather than the other way around. There would then be a subset who choose to put more business through LH group carriers specifically to attain status. And within those, a subset that would have a Cent card. Even then, I would think most people would want to attain status to access more benefits rather than just access to a lounge (and not a very convenient one unless flights depart from that concourse). I can't see this having a meaningful impact on HON loyalty, but I might be wrong of course and these are just my suppositions.

What could be problematic though is overcrowding, as I assume the last thing the airline wants is to degrade the experience for F passengers. I have never found the FCL with more than 6 or 8 people, but given my infrequent visits I realise this is not a good datapoint. I'd think that LH must be monitoring numbers carefully.

In my case this access rule has meant pushing a bit more business towards LH on short-haul routes, which is a tiny fraction of course but amply compensates the cost of hosting me in the lounge. I may have I wouldn't be surprised if AmEx was not paying LH for lounge access, but had positioned this as a joint promotional initiative for a certain consumer segment.

duplicate

I finally got a chance to try this out. My inbound and outbound flight were at the A terminal and I arrived at 5:30am. So I thought why not give it a try to access the F lounge in A. But even though it was empty at that hour, I was told to go to terminal B. I had nearly 5 hours transit so that's what I did. As I had to go out and in passport control they could not drive me to the plane even if they wanted to. But at least I had a better experience than the Senator lounge. However I was rather surprised to find that the spa treatments in the F lounge cost money! Lots of money! I've never seen that in any F lounge that I can think of. Not AF, nor BA certainly.

I wasn't even aware that they were offering spa treatments, is this only at FCL B? I never noticed this at FCL A / FCT.
But of course since they aren't free, I won't bother...:D

So let me get this straight, as a Amex plat I have access to FRA Sen lounge in T1 B, but not at T1 A? I have business tickets for next week and I wanted to see how's the Senator lounge compared to the business.

The SEN lounge is not much different from the C lounge. Can be less busy at times, but busier other times. It has a slightly expanded F&B offering (e.g., usually one more entree to choose from).

If you do have time to spare, you can still visit the SEN lounge in T1B--there is no ticket checkpoint which won't let you through. Once again, only visit the T1B if you have time to spare, you'd have to pass through two passport control points etc.

Was back at FRA, this time flying non-Schengen. At the lounge check in they proactively said I would be driven to my flight. And indeed at the appropriate time I took the elevator down to the waiting Porsche. :)

They opened a very nice bottle of Ruinart Champagne for me at the bar. I'm very happy with this new benefit and all things being equal will continue to reward LH with my business.

+1

My last two experiences have been exactly this, expect Chianti was involved ;)